How Tight Our League Is

That is quite some stat......

 

Shows how fine the line can be between success and failure, and just how dangerous it can be to replace experience with untested youth. Bit easier in L1, but the Championship is a brutal learning curve

 

Unfortunately our board learned nothing from our last relagation

 

Without arguing the point, Luton (23rd) rammed their side full of experience.

Conversely, Brentford have the second youngest squad, and they're 3rd.

 

But Brentford took Pinnock from us and jansson from Leeds both with championship experience.

We replaced with Halme who'd barely played for Leeds and I'm not sure Oduor even had?

 

Brentford have invested (and cashed in on player sales). We've let Pinnock go for peanuts. He was a £10 million player if we hung on to him this year, instead Brentford will sell him for double that, if they don't get promoted.

No problem with the general strategy, other than I have to see Sollbauer as being as important as Struber in turning round our form. Everyone could see we needed a bit of experience at the back DS was crying out for it.

 

Two words...

If only.

 

Well that is arguing a point really!

Nobody (that I know of at least) asked for the side to be rammed with experience, or expected it to be. There’s nothing wrong with *mainly* concentrating on young talent. We asked for a more experienced player or two to compliment and help the youngsters, for some know-how, a bit of game management nous maybe, and leadership.

Brentford might have the second youngest squad, but who has been their best centre half this season?

Conversely, how much better have we been defensively since we signed a centre back aged 29 (now turned 30), with hundreds of professional games behind him?

Lastly, they might be second lowest average age - to us obviously - but their AVERAGE age is nearly two years older.

So there is a near two year gap between the youngest average squad and the second youngest. The same gap, 1.8 years from brentford up, takes in nearly half the rest of the division.

If our average age had been increased from 22.3 a bit, to 24 or even 23.5, still the youngest in the league but with a player or two in the mould of Sollbauer from the season start rather than January, do you believe we’d be in 24th position now?

 

It's not about age, it's about experience. We used to sign young players with experience, but now it seems like it's enough for them to just be under 25.

I'd love us to follow Brentford's model - I think that aspiring to be like them is the logical next phase of the plan. I just wish that our owners agreed.

 

That’s bang on troff agree with everything you say.

 

Edit: Taking this down, not fair. But I'm still furious.

 

Age and experience are different.

 

You're not wrong, Mario. But, it's generally difficult for an under-23 player to have a great deal of experience, in comparison to someone at 30.

Not being argumentative, just saying a bloody-minded policy of all players must be under 23 means we'll struggle for experience.

In the same vein, leadership and motivation when we're struggling. A big issue this season has been heads dropping after going behind.

 

If he’d scored on Saturday we’d not be 24th.

I was just adding something to a potential discussion buddy, I wasn’t arguing for or against anything.

But I think it goes without saying, that Sollbauer alone has made us a stronger side. So you’d argue we’d be a handful of points better off had he been here since August, yes.

 

Pinnock played 15 games in Championship, he was actually a very inexperienced player when we sold him with 1/2 a season in Championship and one in Lg1 aside of that he hadn’t even played in any of the leagues.

 

I genuinely understand why folk keep referring to them, I do. It's easy to look at the sales and signings and them being top 12 for the last five years, and concluding that they must be doing something right. I mean, they're arguably smaller than we are, historically. But so were Bournemouth.

And like Bournemouth, the Bees had someone investing over £100,000,000. That's a huge factor. But there are others too.

 

One last point from me.

What would fans think if it was revealed that the owners of Barnsley FC were selling Oakwell, whilst having a new stadium built, which they would also sell upon completion, and then lease that stadium?

That's Brentford.

 

Nothing to do with them ramming the squad with experience all we should have done was hold onto players we already had.

 

Still.more games than those we replaced him with, and they also were able to bed him in gently rather than the sink or swim scenario we had with our defenders.

 

I never referred to Barnsley FC.